Wind is a cheap, abundant, and clean source of energy. Windmills and other wind-driven motors have been widely used in urban and rural areas for years. Although their use as an energy source has greatly diminished with the advent of electricity and portable motors powered by petroleum derivatives, windmills are becoming increasingly more popular as the price of alternate sources of energy rises. The pollution-free aspect of wind-driven motors has also greatly contributed to their increased popularity.
Windmills are particularly adaptable to drive electric generators. The high annular velocity that windmills can produce enables them to effectively compete with other energy sources in the production of electric power. This is especially true in remote areas. Windmills are also widely used in rural areas to drive mechanical devices as for example pumps which raise water to the surface for livestock ponds.
Efficiency, simplicity of design, strength, and the cost of construction and maintenance are important factors in any windmill operation. The ability to protect the windmill from the destructive force of excessively high winds is also paramount. By far, the most common windmill design involves a rotatably mounted blade assembly that is continuously aligned in a predetermined relationship to the incoming wind by a tail rudder. In these designs, no attempt is made to direct or channel the incoming wind in such a manner as to create a vortex of whirling winds about the blade members in order to intensify the driving force of the wind and thereby increase the rotational velocity and efficiency of the windmill. The windmill of the present invention directs or channels the incoming wind to create such a vortex of whirling winds about the blade members and uses a design that is simple, strong, inexpensive to build and maintain, and includes a governor arrangement to protect the blade assemblies from the destructive force of excessively high winds. The governor of the present invention incrementally deflects more wind away from the blade assembly as the force of the incoming wind progressively increases above a predetermined amount.